News Staff

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Author Archives: News Staff

Precision health in the palm of your hand

By | January 12, 2021

Precision health takes into account variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. Huge amounts of data are being collected and analyzed to manage our care, but results can be slow in coming, and the wait between testing and diagnosis can be days or weeks. However, recent breakthrough developments in technologies are poised to deliver a new… Read More »

COVID forced psychiatric care online, and many patients want it to stay there, study finds

By | January 11, 2021

A year ago, trying to find patients who would agree to see their Michigan Medicine mental health provider through a video screen felt like pulling teeth. But on March 23, all non-urgent health care across the state of Michigan shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Video chats and phone calls became (and remain) the only way… Read More »

Building a testing-free future

By | January 11, 2021

Testing is a cornerstone of quality software design. And yet, it’s time consuming, labor and resource intensive, and extremely difficult to do exhaustively. In fact, most software in use today is so complex that thorough testing is practically impossible. A group of researchers from U-M envision a smarter alternative: why not let math do the heavy lifting of… Read More »

$9.95M for ‘smart intersections’ across Ann Arbor

By | January 8, 2021

Ann Arbor will soon be home to more than 20 “smart intersections”—capable of gathering and transmitting information in real time to connected cars—as part of a University of Michigan effort to demonstrate the safety potential of connected and automated vehicles. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration has awarded U-M $9.95 million toward the effort, which will… Read More »

Michigan Medicine launches Fluency Direct speech recognition technology

By | January 7, 2021

Beginning this month, Michigan Medicine will launch a speech recognition technology called Fluency Direct. Michigan Medicine is retiring Dragon services effective Feb. 3 and Phone Transcription services effective Feb. 15. “Michigan Medicine has seen a steady decline in phone transcription users, but still incurs substantial per-line transcription costs and fixed vendor costs,” said Jeff Terrell, professor of otolaryngology.… Read More »

Managing your digital life

By | January 4, 2021

“Digital archiving” might sound like something best left to trained professionals, but with so much of our lives online — photos, videos, financial records, audio recordings, creative projects — we’re all engaged in it these days, if only by neglect.  To help people become more purposeful about the organization and preservation of their digital lives, Scott Witmer, digital preservation… Read More »

Patient rounds: Ages-old care & learning concept gets technology upgrade, international collaboration

By | December 24, 2020

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical rotations were halted for medical students, which meant they could not participate in patient rounds—those bedside consultations with seasoned medical staff to discuss and learn about a patient’s condition. This led Mark Cohen, a professor of surgery and pharmacology who runs the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the Medical School to think… Read More »

Changes coming in 2021 to Zoom for Health

By | December 23, 2020

U-M Zoom has been approved for PHI (HIPAA data). As a result, Zoom for Health at U-M will be consolidated into regular U-M Zoom January 2–3, 2021. New features Thanks to collaborative efforts of U-M and Zoom, users will be able to use expanded features, such as: Cloud recording Live transcription Viewing identifying information in reports Ability to… Read More »

Lessons in architecture: 3-D without leaving the classroom (or living room)

By | December 22, 2020

When architecture professor Jonathan Rule wanted his students to see firsthand the way various building materials came together, he had to find a construction site near campus and arrange for the class to walk through. Finding a suitable project isn’t always feasible, not to mention the logistics and liability involved. So with assistance over the past year from… Read More »

XR Initiative at 1: Milestones met as pandemic brings new challenges, opportunities

By | December 22, 2020

When leaders at the Center for Academic Innovation announced an XR initiative a little more than a year ago, they knew there was a hunger from a growing segment of campus to advance teaching through the development of augmented and virtual reality technologies. They couldn’t have anticipated, however, that a global pandemic would so disrupt education that faculty… Read More »

Watch: Lessons learned from quick pivots to online education

By | December 21, 2020

The winter term that begins in January will be the third term in a row that instructor David Chesney’s unique software design course will be online, and he has learned from each iteration.  For the past decade, the U-M electrical engineering and computer science lecturer has taught Software for Accessibility, a class he designed in which  undergraduate students… Read More »

HoloLens2 for Nursing: ‘Hands-on’ learning during pandemic and beyond

By | December 21, 2020

The U-M School of Nursing has one of the most technologically advanced programs around with its Clinical Learning Center, yet leadership in the school wrestled with how to teach hundreds of students the hands-on nursing skills and procedures required to advance in the program, while following COVID-19 guidelines for social distancing and university calls to minimize in-person courses.… Read More »

Founded by CoE alum, SambaNova announces AI-accelerated HPC system

By | December 18, 2020

As artificial intelligence applications grow and multiply, researchers have been racing to design a new generation of hardware that meets the unique computational needs of those applications. The market for these “AI chips” is booming, and a key player in this new space is Palo Alto based SambaNova Systems. SambaNova, now a unicorn valued at over $2.5 billion,… Read More »

New how-to resources and data offerings on Precision Health Analytics Platform

By | December 17, 2020

Researchers across campus can now directly query, via SQL server, a de-identified version of the Research Data Warehouse, which includes all 4 million unique Michigan Medicine patients. Learn how to leverage this resource and more Precision Health resources through our updated documentation site (accessible with a Level 1 UMICH login) and video demos and how-to’s. Precision Health has expanded its offerings… Read More »

Extended reality: U-M online courses make XR accessible to everyone

By | December 15, 2020

A new three-course online specialization on extended reality developed by Michael Nebeling, an assistant professor with both the School of Information and the College of Engineering, and a team at the U-M Center for Academic Innovation has something for everyone—from novices to the most advanced users, designers, and developers. Extended reality, or XR, is the term for technology… Read More »

Season’s Greeting from ITS!

By | December 14, 2020

As we close out 2020, Information and Technology Services would like to thank our Michigan IT colleagues, faculty, staff, and students for their flexibility and willingness to adapt to so many changes this year. Happy holidays and best wishes for the winter term! Visit the ITS website for IT resources to make 2021 a successful new year.

Research reproducibility in data science and the role of IT staff

By | December 8, 2020

A significant challenge facing a wide variety of disciplines is the ability to reproduce research results. Researchers across U-M are working together to develop best practices that promote reproducible data science, and Michigan IT staff play an important role in this effort. “Many IT staff members don’t normally get involved directly in specific research projects, so the reproducibility… Read More »

After five years, Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit based on tech developed at Michigan, has helped to secure the internet

By | December 4, 2020

Just five years ago, most websites relied on unencrypted HTTP, the aging and inherently insecure protocol that provides no protection to sites or visitors from threats that range from surveillance through phishing and identity theft. Today, the internet is a much more secure place, with over 80% of websites protected by HTTPS secure encryption. That dramatic transformation –… Read More »

Algorithm & Blues: Machine-aided personnel decisions aim for fairness, risk side effects

By | December 3, 2020

When it comes to making human resources decisions, can humans be fair? What about relying on algorithms to make decisions instead? The answer to the first question is not always, which leads some business leaders to pursue the second. Yet, it turns out decisions made by machines are perceived as even less fair than those made by humans.… Read More »